This invention relates to the preparation of large mailings and the like. More particularly it relates to systems and apparatus for the preparation of documents and the assembly of multiple mailpieces including such documents.
The term "mailpieces" as used herein means items intended to be delivered by a postal service or private courier service. Typically preparation of mailpieces includes, but is not limited to, printing or otherwise providing documents including variable information pertaining to addressees of the mailpieces and the assembly of such documents with other elements of the mailpiece. The term "assembly" as used herein means the execution of actions to incorporate the documents into mailpieces. Typically, such actions can include: accumulating documents with other materials such as preprinted inserts, folding and inserting the resulting accumulations into envelopes, printing addresses and other information on the outside of the envelopes, and franking the mailpiece with an appropriate postage amount.
Inserter systems for the assembly of mailpieces are well known. Typically such systems will comprise a document feeder for providing accumulations of documents and a plurality of stations (hereinafter sometimes a "chassis") for carrying out assembly operations with such accumulations to form mailpieces. The chassis will operate cyclically, at a constant speed with accumulations advancing to the next station at fixed intervals at the end of each cycle. The document feeder will also operate at a fixed speed but will provide accumulations to the chassis at varying intervals since the number of sheets in each accumulation will vary. The general operation of such inserter systems is well known and is described, for example, in commonly assigned, co-pending U.S. application Ser. No.: 09/124,501; titled: System, Method and Apparatus for Preparation of Mailpieces; filed: Jul. 29, 1988. Except as is set forth below by way of illustration of preferred embodiments of the subject invention a more detailed description of the operation of such inserter systems is not necessary to an understanding of the subject invention.
While systems such as those described above have proven highly successful certain disadvantages remain. In particular the fact that chassis cycle at fixed intervals while documents are delivered at varying intervals means that a potential exists that no documents will be available for a particular cycle. Clearly the possibility of such "dry holes" can be eliminated simply by operating the chassis slowly enough to assure that the maximum number of sheets can be accumulated in one cycle but, equally clearly, operating at that minimal speed will be highly inefficient in the general case where relatively few accumulations with a maximum number of sheets are expected. Conversely, in mailing jobs having a relatively large number of large accumulations, running too fast will cause a large number of dry holes and a higher throughput is achieved by operating the chassis at a slower speed. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that accumulation size will vary with within mailing jobs.
Heretofore efforts to improve the operating efficiency of inserter systems have not addressed this problem in a direct, simple and cost effective manner. Thus, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,987,547 and 5,083,281; to: Rabindran et al. teach a method for optimizing system speed to minimize time lost to jams and stoppages; while U.S. Pat. No. 5,826,869; to: Nyffenegger teaches a non-standard, buffered, variable speed document feeder which it is believed would substantially add to the cost and complexity of an inserter system.
Thus it is an object of the subject invention to provide a simple, cost-effective method for tuning the performance of an inserter system during the run-time of a mailing job.